Monarto Zoo World's first breeding of......

Monarto zoo has bred 14 pygmy blue-tongue lizards.
These recently rediscovered lizards are the first to be born in captivity.
In what the zoo is hailing a conservation world first, the baby critters were born to five different females over two weeks, the first litter being born on January 26.

That's actually really good news, although I wouldn't say it was "recently" rediscovered as it was 24 years ago they found them.

It was a really good story too. Pretty much every amateur and professional herpetologist in South Australia (and a good many from other states, too) had been looking for the lizard over the years, it was like the Thylacine except there were never any 'sightings'. The problem was nobody really knew where it was found, and South Australia is quite large and, in many parts, desert. Remote, arid, and uninhabited.

In '92 a survey team from the South Australian Museum were surveying wildlife in part of SA well north of Adelaide but still in an inhabited area. While driving along they saw a dead brown snake, a roadkill, on the side of the road and so they stopped and collected it for the Museum's collection. The herpetologist noticed the snake had recently fed as there was a noticeable bulge in it's belly so he dissected it open on the side of the road and a pygmy bluetongue rolled out.

The rediscovery was kept secret and an intensive search followed a few weeks later to see if they could find some live specimens. It took a while but eventually they did - the adult lizards are so small they spend much of their life living in spider holes (not sure if they eat the original inhabitant or if they just look for abandoned holes).

Until recently only Adelaide Zoo kept them on display, and when I last visited the zoo in 2010 they were down to one, and it wasn't on display. Good to know Monarto has finally cracked the secret to breeding them and with luck will replicate this feat again in the near future.

Hope the Monarto example may propel Adelaide Zoo to come on board as well and restart their breeding project work with pygmy blues proper.

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Adelaide Zoo never really stopped working with them, they were down to one in 2009/10 but then brought in a new group of eight from the wild in 2010/11 (and some more later). The ones at Monarto are a different group, captured from the wild last year.

Adelaide Zoo never really stopped working with them, they were down to one in 2009/10 but then brought in a new group of eight from the wild in 2010/11 (and some more later). The ones at Monarto are a different group, captured from the wild last year.

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Thanks for updating the info.

One would think that with the new info on how to achieve breeding success the chances for the Adelaide group have also significantly increased.